COMMENT The walk there itself can be intimidating. In your mind, you may think: “Would people think I’m gay if I attend? Does this shirt look too pink? Why are those people staring at me?”

With every step towards New York’s illustrious Fifth Avenue, my paranoia grew inflamed as I heard the cheers thunder louder and louder.

Standing there in the vast crowd, watching the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community march into the city centre, my mind streamed to thoughts of the struggles they fought to stand where they are today.

Amidst a generation that today judges each other more adversely and publicly, it must surely take more than oneself to defy what many argue to be the “natural orientation of sex”.

It’s been a historic week here in the United States. With the US Supreme Court ruling that same sex marriage is constitutional across all of America, the Pride Parade last Sunday was a culminating event to the sense of changing times.

Many in Malaysia point to the historic ruling and make evidence to the dangers of abiding to a few, to the dangers of a majority losing principles, the dangers of a majority being too compromising to the demands of the minorities.

Magically, the right of two men in the US to marry each other is now the rallying cry for Malay Muslims to stand strong against any who try to interfere with 'our' core values.

As Muslims who actively try engaging with our surrounding community, there is perhaps a sense of loss in what to do, what to think of the US Supreme Court ruling. On one side, the Quran clearly identifies the distaste towards having a sexual relationship with one similar to your sex.

Cooking tall tales on gays

In Surah Al-A’raf, Prophet Lut asks his people: 'How could you commit these indecent acts such as none in all the worlds has committed before you? Indeed you lust after men instead of women. Truly you are a people transgressing beyond bounds,” (7: 80-81).

Yet at same time, looking at how we in Malaysia demonise and prosecute the LGBT community, the sense of compassion and care that Islam prioritises beyond all else is seemingly at some loss.

Politicians on both sides of the table have called gays a 'disease to our community', while certain states are considering stoning or death as punishments for homosexual activity.

In as much as sexual relationships between the persons of the same sex are against Islam, surely Prophet Muhammad, who even showed sympathy to the Qurayza Jews in Medina - after they continuously betrayed him in battle - would disagree to our unfiltered boiling hate towards the LGBTs in Malaysia.

In 2013, a state-sponsored play named ' Asmara Songsang ' (Abnormal Desire, photo ) toured around Kuala Lumpur, featuring gays and lesbians as 'predatory deviants who recruit straight teenagers into their club and force them to forsake religion'.

According to the play, the lifestyle of gays included periodic loud parties, repetitive casual sex, drug abuse and criminal activity. Here, the sense of fear-mongering and baseless generalisation cannot be more clear - taken differently, it’d be like a play depicting Malays as lazy and uneducated and that we should all be convinced of this.

We call ourselves a tolerant Muslim nation, yet is it truly the way of Prophet Muhammad to make up stories about the LGBT community, without even taking the step to listen to their beliefs?

I have numerous friends who are openly gay, yet I wouldn’t for a second try forcing them or pursue jailing them for what they choose to be. It is perhaps the higher test that Allah has given us to engage with ones we don’t align with, with those that share different beliefs from our own and to refrain from barbaric instincts of stoning or even firing water canons at them (as Turkey did recently).

Easy to throw rocks

Is it right to state Islam’s opposition to same sex marriage? Yes. But demonising the LGBT community in Malaysia is perhaps the ultimate symbol of how weak our personal identification to Islam truly is, an inability to explore the other opinion, the other perspective while our own core values are still intact.

Many in Malaysia look at the Muslims in America and criticise them for being too liberal - 'Muslim liberals' is the term.

As if the Sunni and Shi’ite narrative is not enough to segregate the Muslim community, we now have yet another dividing fence among the Muslims, further hurting our ability to accept, talk and learn from one another.

Today, prosecuting gays and clamping down on transsexuals seems to be the ultimate chest-beating to announce your Muslimhood.

But what of the unity that Prophet Muhammad spoke of? A unity whereon we had the courage to listen to everyone in the community, the courage to invite them within the ambit of compassion and care?

It is easy for us to throw rocks or to call gays and lesbians a 'disease'. Though it is much harder and it takes a stronger character to actually engage with our fellow LGBT Malaysians.

As our very famous, late actor P Ramlee once said, "Memang bangsa kita masih muda dan masih lemah, harapanku hanyalah kita sama bangsa, bersama padulah hendaknya."

(True that our race is young and weak, but my hope is that our country will be united.)

SHAMIL NORSHIDI is a Malaysian studying in the United States.